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The Big Year
The Big Year is an informal competition among birders who believe they can find,see and hear the most species of birds in North America in a single 365-day calendar year.A Big Year can be completed in a US state,a Canadian province,within the 48 contiguous US States,or within the official American Birding Association area(defined as the 49 continental US states,Canada,and the French territories of St. Pierre and Miquelon,plus adjacent waters to a distance of 200 miles from land or half the distance to a neighboring country,whichever distance is less.)Excluded in this territory are Hawaii,The Bahamas,Greenland,and Bermuda) History of the Big Year When Roger Tory Peterson published his first field guide in 1934,it completely revolutionized birding.But,in that era,not a lot of birders traveled across the country.The earliest known continent-wide Big Year record was compiled by Guy Emerson,who timed his business trips to coincide with the best birding seasons for different areas of North America.His best year was in 1939,when he saw a total of 497 species.His record was broken by Bob Smart who saw 510 species.And so The Big Year was born... In 1953,Roger Tory Peterson and an Englishman named James Fisher took a 30,000-mile journey across the continent,visiting the wild places of North America.In 1955,they both wrote a book and made a documentary about their adventures,both called Wild America.''In one of footnotes of the book,Peterson said:"My year's list at the end of 1953 was 572 species".In 1956,the stakes were raised when a 25-year old Englishman named Stuart Keith compiled 598 species for his Big Year after becoming inspired by Peterson and Fisher's ''Wild America.''Keith eventually went on to co-found the American Birding Association.Keith's record stood for 15 years until in 1971 when a young 18 year-old teenager named Ted Parker,in his final semester of high school in Pennsylvania,went birding along the East Coast.In September,he enrolled in The University of Arizona in Tucson.He saw dozens of specialties from The Southwest and The Pacific Coast.He finished with a total of 627 species. In 1973,a man from Indiana named Kenn Kaufman and another birder named Floyd Murdoch both went after Parker's record.in the book ''KIngbird Highway,It says that both Kaufman and Murdoch broke the record.Murdoch finished with 669 species while Kaufman tallied 666.Murdoch's record was broken by James M. Vardaman in 1979 with a total of 699 species and traveled 161,332 miles across the continent.In 1983,Benton Basham topped it with 710. In 1998,3 different competitors were the subject of a novel by Mark Obmascik.He then wrote ''The Big Year:A Tale of Man,Nature and Fowl Obsession,''Which follows the 1998 Big Year through the eyes of Sandy Komito,Greg Miller and Al Levantin competing to break a record held Sandy Komito with 721,Komito won with a total of.The book was then turned into a comedy film directed by David Frankel.In 2012,James Pascatore created a manga version of the novel and the film adaptation with the same characters but with female versions.Fabia Higashiyama-Sheen as Greg Miller,Jessie O'Connor as Al Levantin and Camille Flexson as Sandy Komito. 2000s (in real life) In 2005,Lynn Barber did a Big Year in her home state of Texas,finishing with 522 species,In 2008,She did an ABA Big Year across the country and won with a total of 723.The same year,Florida birder,Paddy Cunningham finished in 27th place with 448 and won 20th for the Lower 48 States,but won 1st place in her home state of Florida with 330 In the summer of 2007,Malkolm Boothroyd and his parents attempted a combined Big Year by avoiding the use of fossil fuels and travel North America only by bicycle and get over 400 species.They set out from their home province of the Yukon Territory,rode down the Pacific Coast ,looped around Arkansas and head to Texas to see the spring migration,then eastward to Florida.In the end,the 3-man team traveled 13,000 miles and tallied 548 species and raised more than $25.000 for bird conservation in the process. In 2010,Chris Hitt of Chapel Hill,North Carolina sought to find as many birds as he can in The Lower 48 States.He became the first birder to find 700+ species in the Lower 48 states in a single year and finished with 704.The same year,Bob Ake of Virginia achieved the 2nd highest total for a continental Big Year with a total of 731. In 2011,John Vanderpoel of Colorado set out across the country and reached 700 before November.Vanderpoel was considered a threat to Sandy Komito's record of 745 species.He only finished with 744,missing the record by 1,In 2012,Florida teen birder,James Pascatore,son of Paddy Cunningham,set out a Big Year on Easter Day although 3 months behind,visiting only New England,Florida,The North Carolina Outer Banks,The Eastern Shore of Virginia and Ohio and finished with 304,reaching 300 on New Year's Eve.In 2013,Neil Hayward of Massachusetts broke Sandy Komito's recorded finishing with 748 and 3 provisional species